Nothing they had done had moved the southern regiments off the plateau. No assault gained enough ground to let supporting troops reinforce success, and so the northern attacks had been beaten back again and again, and each repulse had whelped its litter of dead and dying men who lay in rows like tidal wrack to mark the limits of each federal assault.

Ammunition had run short in some northern regiments. The southerners, pushed back toward their own baggage, were distributing tubs of cartridges to their troops, but the northern supplies were still east of the Bull Run and every wagon or limber or caisson had to be brought through the traffic jam that developed around the stone bridge and too often, even when ammunition was brought to the hilltop, it proved to be the wrong kind and so troops armed with .58 rifles received .69 musket ammunition and, as their rifles fell silent, they retreated to leave a gap in the northern line into which the gray rebels moved.

On both sides the rifles and muskets misfired or broke. The cones through which the percussion cap spat its fire into the powder charge broke most frequently, but as the southerners pressed forward they could pick up the guns of the northern dead and so keep up the slaughter. Yet still the northerners fought on. Their rifle and musket barrels were fouled with the clinker of burnt powder so that each shot took a huge effort to ram home, and the day was hot and the air filled with acrid powder smoke so that the mouths and gullets of the weary men were dry and raw, and their shoulders were bruised black from the recoil of the heavy guns, and their voices hoarse from shouting, their eyes were smarting with smoke, their ears ringing with the hammer blows of the big guns, their arms aching from ramming the bullets down the fouled barrels, yet still they fought. They bled and fought, cursed and fought, prayed and fought. Some of the men seemed dazed, just standing open-eyed and open-mouthed, oblivious to their officers’ shouts or to the discordant din of bullets, guns, shells and screams.